I never said that I speak on behlf of the dev team. And the devs obviously can still have a change of heart on matters, which EHG often did, even on things they had a pretty firm stance on in the past.
Nontheless when I say “the devs wanted this” or “this was on purpose”, I don’t say things like these because I think that (unless I elaborate that its a guess), but I do it because they said it somewhere, for example a dev blog or similar. (In this case it was from a dev blog they did when they changed the crafting system from Fracturing%chance to Forging Potential.
Well putting two oppositional stances on a forum thread does help to create a discourse for other people to chime in.
Also I do not think the system is great. I have quite a few things I don’t like about the system which I said on several occasions, but the thing I like about the system is the thing you gave feedback about: The variance and unpredictability. I love these things in these type of games.
For example, the thing I absolutely hate about the system right now, is that Glyph of Chaos and Glyph of Despair can crit to increase affix tiers. Specifically these two Glyphs should only not cost FP when criting, because increasing the affix tier of the crafted or the other affixes can be a detriment which makes it feel like you got cheated by the system, by having a supposedly “good” outcome ruin your craft.